


Personal Space

by awed_frog



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (sort of), Anthropology, Apocalypse, Castiel Feels, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Declarations Of Love, Episode: s05e03 Free to Be You and Me, Humans are complicated, I Blame Tumblr, M/M, Poor Dean, Sad and Happy, there is always an apocalypse somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 18:11:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8067577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awed_frog/pseuds/awed_frog
Summary: (That infamous discussion we never saw; story set early in season 5)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [destieldrabblesdaily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/destieldrabblesdaily/gifts).



> Written for **Shirley's 30K Fanfic Contest** \- most of the time I walk around with bits of sentences and motel rooms weighing down my pockets like shiny pebbles, and I generally try to ignore them and stay away from rivers, just in case, but then someone comes around and says, _Hey, why don't you write it down?_ and suddenly you have an excuse to open a blank new document and give in to it. And that feels really, really good, and real life be damned. So thank you, Shirley!
> 
> (If you haven't already, go and check out [the winners](http://destieldrabblesdaily.tumblr.com/30kficcontest)!)

“Danny Salzman says it’s okay,” Cas says, appearing out of thin air, and Dean almost has a heart attack and fucking _dies_.

“Who the _fuck_ is Danny Salzman?” he asks, putting down the razor, and thank _God_ he hadn’t started shaving yet.

“He is -” Dean looks at Cas through the mirror, sees him blink at the room, sees the usual constipated expression around his eyes, because, yeah, it’s like Cas’ always doing this - trying to work out something extremely difficult or something - like he thinks human life is confusing as fuck, even this dingy motel room, and especially Dean, who slept in his clothes and isn’t down for any kind of weirdness, not today. “- was, I should say, a prophet.”

“Wait. So there’s _prophets_ now?”

Cas only looks at him, and Dean shakes his head, a bit of shaving cream falling neatly smack in the middle of the old-fashioned sink.

“And, what - you killed him?”

Dean doesn’t know, or care, who Danny Salzman is and what prophets have to do with anything - there’s enough shit on his plate as it is - but he hasn’t missed the past tense. And he would like to think Cas wouldn’t kill anyone, but, yeah.

“He died in 1986,” Cas says, managing to sound almost offended. “And he was an anthropologist, and assistant curator at the Smithsonian.”

There was a _So there_ at the end of that sentence, Dean’s sure of it.

 _Goddammit_.

“So what was he right about?” he asks, because it’s way too early to figure out how Cas’ mind works and Jesus, he promised he’d meet Bobby in Louisiana six fucking hours from now.

He picks up his razor again, squints at the mirror.

“Personal space,” Cas says from behind him, and, whatever, the little shit’s definitely waited until Dean had started shaving, and now he’s bleeding and -

“What the _fuck_ are you going on about?” he says, more and more bad-tempered.

He presses a thumb on the small cut by his throat, and then he turns around and opens his arms wide, in a kind of _Will you just leave me the fuck alone_ gesture.

(Except that’s not what he wants, because he’s weak and scared and a mess and the fact Cas chose him over fucking _Heaven_ -)

“I told him about you,” Cas says, taking a step forward; and then he stops, frowns. “Well, he knew anyway. When you were born his entire desk caught fire.”

“Why would - uh, you know what? Never mind. Don’t answer that.”

Cas stares at him, and he’s clearly trying to decide if it’s true Dean doesn’t want an answer to his half-there question.

“I went to see him, just now. And I explained about you, and he gave me this,” he says in the end, a bit diffidently; he fishes into his pocket, and now there’s a paper folded in four in his outstretched hand.

Dean takes it, because this is his life now and the sooner he gets used to it, the better.

It’s a photocopy from some boring, academic book. _Desmond Morris_ , Dean reads, squinting a bit in the dim light of the room. And there’s several diagrams of men and women drawn in different shades of grey. _The Taboo Areas of the Human Body_ , the title states, and Dean sort of sees where this is going, and something inside him gears itself up to push back against it.

“We are same sex friends,” Cas says, his voice a bit uncertain, and Dean knows what he’s thinking, because he’s thinking the same thing - _are_ they of the same sex? 

Hell, are they even _friends_?

“Cas, I -”

“Which means I can touch you everywhere except on your face and around your groin. Though hands seem to be the most usual place to touch a same sex friend,” Cas adds, dutifully, as if to show he’s done his reading.

“Yeah, but -”

“Danny Salzman never said anything about personal space. And Sam doesn’t seem to have an issue with it.”

And this last thing bothers Dean to no end, though he can’t exactly pin down why.

“Yeah, that’s because you don’t grind yourself up against _him_ ,” he says, slamming the paper on the cheap porcelain as he turns back to the mirror.

A pause, and then -

“Should I?”

Dean closes his fingers more firmly around the razor, breathes out.

“ _No_ ,” he grits out. “No, Cas, you should _not_.”

“Why not?”

Dean’s now holding the razor so tightly it’s a wonder the thing doesn’t break.

“Because it’s weird as _fuck_ , okay?” 

He tilts his head back, finally starts shaving again. The matter is fucking _closed_ , every inch of his body is saying; but, of fucking course, Cas doesn’t pick up on that, and how is it that the damn angel can travel through fucking _time_ and not get Dean doesn’t want to talk about -

“But your levels of testosterone and oxytocin always spike when I stand too close to you.”

“Means I’m pissed off,” Dean says, trying to focus on the job at hand.

“No,” says Cas seriously, and Dean sees him out of the corner of his eye - sees him tilting his head to one side, and then fucking taking another step closer to him. “It means you’re aroused.”

Oh for fuck’s -

“Listen, I’m not -” Dean starts, and then he grips the edges of the sink because, yeah, Cas’ seen all of his damn memories when he put him back together, so he can probably remember every single time Dean’s had fun with some dude, and even what his blood pressure was at the time and if he had burritos or bacon or fucking pie for fucking breakfast.

Yeah, Dean can just _see_ how that stupid conversation would go, and no thank you.

“It’s - complicated, okay?” he says instead; and then he looks up.

Cas is still staring at him.

“Complicated how?” he asks.

Fucking _hell_.

“What about you, uh?” Dean says, a bit desperately, trying to score any kind of point. “You don’t pull any of this crap with Sam, or Bobby. What’s up with that?”

Cas stares at him some more, but there’s something different in his expression now. When he finally lowers his eyes, he looks -

“I don’t know,” he says, in a low voice. “You are -”

He never finishes the thought, for which Dean is mildly grateful.

And also -

“Yeah. So you get it,” Dean says, shrugging the feeling off his skin like a dog would water, and he wants to turn around, but he can’t, because then this would become a real conversation, and his head is definitely not screwed up right for that. “And, whatever - ‘s not the right moment for any of that shit, Cas.”

Dean gestures vaguely, and now it’s not only testosterone and oxytocin coursing through his body - now he’s thinking about Lucifer and the fucking Apocalypse and he doesn’t know how they can win, and how any of them will make it out, and part of him wants to give the fuck up, and another part wants to fight everyone just to show ‘em, and then most of what he is - his heart and soul and fucking lungs - is so damn _worried_ about Sam he could spend his whole day throwing up if he allows himself to think about that - about the fucking _Devil_ smiling at his kid brother and wanting to -

“I understand,” says Cas softly from behind him; and then, after a long moment, after Dean has gone back to shaving again, because he’s still alive and this is a new day and there’s hunting to be done and that’s on him, then Cas adds, even more softly, “But if the right moment should come - will you tell me?”

Something huge and colourful and fucking unfair blossoms and spreads inside Dean’s chest, against those ribs Cas has recreated and reshaped and bent into place and then tattooed in graceful Enochian letters of safety and protection; something that feels suspiciously like joy (like hope).

“Yeah,” Dean says, tapping his razor lightly against the sink so the cream will slide off the blade. “Yeah, Cas. I can do that. I’ll tell you.”

He raises his eyes, meets Cas’ blue gaze through the mirror, smiles at the guy (finds he’s unable not to); and then dawn breaks, slides through the broken shutters, makes Baby - sitting quietly just outside the window - gleam in blacks and blues. It’s a new day. It’s time to go.


End file.
